2012 Annual Family Christmas Snack Table

The holidays just wouldn’t be magical in my family unless we all ate until we were sick on multiple occasions. And we have created a party to facilitate just such blissful agony.

It is called the Annual Family Christmas Snack Table.

I designed the invitation and sent them out a few weeks prior to the party night.

No one except me showed up in stretchy pants. That was awkward for a moment. Until they all regretted their decision when I out-ate them all.

I’m sure that this post won’t have nearly enough food to make us all sick, so let’s take a journey back in time to enjoy some past years of Christmas Snacking.

Snack Table 2009, with two very pregnant ladies. I was not one of them.
Snack Table 2010, or the year of the Forbidden Fruit Tray.
Snack Table 2011, or when I had to leave early for work. Are you kidding me?!

Phew! Now that you just had to loosen another hole on your belt, let’s move on to this year’s festivities!

It felt very different this year. Probably because my sister, her husband, and (now) two boys were in Texas for the event instead of gathering around the Snack Table in person with the rest of us.

They Skyped in for some of the fun, but it only made us wish that much more that they were there in person. I hope you know how missed you were, T’liese. We would have probably even temporarily allowed a Fruit Tray, too, if you had only been able to attend.

Should I be captioning these photos, too? I brought Peanut Butter Hershey Kiss Cookies seen up above, and these are Pretzel Turtle Bites.

Which are heavenly.

Which is why I ate them all made them, yo.

Please tell me that you’ve had Andes Mints Cookies. They are soft, chewy cookies that have Andes Mints placed on top just as they come out of the oven. After a few minutes of melting, the mint is swirled around to create a delicious, minty frosting.

I could eat a million of these little buggers. And I probably did, if you must know.

I went to three stores looking for the typical box of Christmas Andes Mints. Did they go out of business and not tell anyone? Finally, Target came through for me, but they were in the form of giant Andes Mints individually wrapped in plastic, not foil. Weird, huh?

So I broke them in half when it came time to “frost.”

I don’t know about you, but this looks like a party-about-happen to me!

I made Lemon Squeeze Cupcakes, which mean that I poured a sweet lemon glaze on top of lemon cupcakes to let things sink in a little. Then I frosted them with lemon cream cheese buttercream frosting.

Cupcakes make my heart go pitter-pat. Or didn’t you know?

I’m finally learning through lots of practice that sometimes, less is more. I don’t like cupcakes with frosting three feet high. I like just enough so that each bite has some frosting, but not so much that you can’t taste the cake!

Yep. I’m becoming a frosting snob!

But they turned out so pretty! And very, very edible, I assure you!

I decided to set aside a few chocolate chewy cookies from the Andes Mint Cookies recipe to make Homemade Oreos with them. With homemade buttercream frosting.

Because I was worried that I wasn’t bringing enough food. *snort*

I am tearing up just thinking about them now…

Aren’t these adorable?! After squishing the halves together, I rolled them in cute Christmas sprinkles to make them even more festive. They were almost too pretty to eat.

Almost.

Wow. I would probably do some pretty awful things to have one of these cookies right about now.

How are all of your New Years resolutions going (nervous laugh)?!

So, after my oven could take no more abuse, we headed north towards my brother’s house for the Snack Table! First, we stopped to pick up my Dad on the way. We had enough time to open some presents, so I caught it all on camera.

He’s a handsome guy, huh?

I look like him.

But that’s not why I think he’s handsome. Sheesh! I don’t want to be a handsome guy!

And now I know where I get my opening-Christmas-presents intensity! Look at this excitement!

A few of his presents were things that he had suggested…like new, fancy drool-proof pillow cases. He is a tough one to buy for, that’s for dang sure. And he certainly doesn’t want anything!

Hmmm. Maybe we’re not related after all. I always want fun stuff!

Oh man. These pictures absolutely crack me up! Have I mentioned how nice it is to have my Dad back from Mexico?

Wait, that sounds bad. He was down there on purpose!

He lived there for seven years and moved back to Phoenix this past April to be closer to family.

It has been wonderful living in the same city as my Dad. That hasn’t happened since I was four years old! He’s a lot of fun, even though I don’t see him as much as I would like. (He is probably grateful for the lack of visits from me!)

He reads a ton, and one of my readers recommended that I give him this book (hi, Peter!). I also bought Dad a new stylus to use on his iPhone, since he lost his about one week after he got it back in May.

Obviously, he was pretty excited to get a new stylus. Probably as excited as I was to give it to him!

And this was probably my favorite picture of all…him posing like he was using the stylus in all its glory. He is so funny!

I’m glad that you’re home, Dad. I love you.

On to the Snack Table! We brought a dear family friend to the event this year. Here Don is prepping his shrimp cocktail that he brought.

It’s his first time…he didn’t know any better. I guess I’ll have to add that to the do-not-bring list next year.

Rookie.

Luckily, it was far enough away from the best thing at the party that I only gagged a few times. Shrimp = fish.

(I stained these cabinets, by the way).

So here is some of the spread. I say some because my Dad brought Chicken Tacos for his savory contribution to the evening. They were so good, but he was still setting them up on the entire back counter when I was taking these pictures. And then I forgot to get a picture of the tacos!

I was probably too distracted with stuffing my face later to remember to take a picture of it all. Oh, the memories.

You’ll just have to trust me, though. He brought incredible Chicken Tacos. He used your recipe, Charloe, and they were out of this world!

These are the Andes Mints Cookies just before being devoured. We always had these growing up at our Family Snack Table, so they just taste like Christmas to me.

And they taste like chocolaty, chewy, minty cookies, too. And that’s fine by me.

Everyone got a cupcake. Or six two.

And these didn’t last long, either. Not that I expected them to last long. Not with this crowd.

Have you seen how we can put food away in my family?!

This was another one of Dad’s contributions to the evening. How he still has candy from Halloween is beyond me (maybe we aren’t related), but I was personally glad that he decided to share it with the rest of us.

Pretzel Rolo Turtle Bites. Sweet, salty, crunchy, caramel. What more could you possibly want in a snackable dessert?

Here is Don, our wonderful family friend. He brought everyone poinsettias for Christmas…so thoughtful! We sure do love Don.

And I wish my brother would let me post pictures of his family, because I got some really good ones of them. I guess we’ll just have to finish the party with a picture of me and Hubby. Very full at this point in the evening.

But that’s the whole point of a Christmas Snack Table!

I am already planning the menu for next year’s event…